Surveillancing Technologies and Informal Economy Workers: Creating Trust with Invisible People

Whenever I start a new gig, I always get to know the cleaning staff right away. To me, those are the people who are most overlooked for very sensitive work - they are trusted with the keys to the entire building and access to every office and desk. Also, janitors tend to have more personality than office workers (sorry friends!).

So I noticed that one day a time monitoring surveillance device was installed in my friend’s office - only her office. We’ll call her Fuerza. Fuerza is the janitor. 

Fuerza told me that the company that she works for (janitorial services are usually out-sourced) was worried other janitors were leaving early so they installed this machine to better monitor their schedule.

I tried not to show my frustration with this when I asked her how she felt about it. Fuerza told me that she was fine with it and that the company already didn’t show confianza - trust in the staff so she wasn’t surprised that this machine was installed. If anything she felt that now her boss wouldn’t be suspicious that she was leaving early. This had been a problem over the last year and she was happy that this machine could resolve this. 

I was upset at the installation of this machine for it contributes to this inflexible monitoring of work and time of informal economy workers. We have all this talk of flex work time for white collar workers but we rarely consider the lives of informal economy workers and their needs for flex work time. Fuerza leaves her house at 4am for a 2 hour public transportation bus commute to work. Even though she often times finishes all the cleaning by 3pm, she still has to stay til 4pm. She told me that she wishes on some days she could leave early to pick her son up from school or the library.

But what’s interesting is that Fuerza wasn’t really upset about it like me. She felt this relief that she no longer would be questioned about her work hours because for her nothing changed with her schedule- she couldn’t leave any earlier, but she could have the trust of her boss.

To me this is an interesting story about trust and privacy of low-income workers and in particular, informal economy workers. It’s always been odd to me the unequal power relationship between office workers and janitors.

I haven’t worked inside a corporate building for a long time. And being there reminded me again of the power dynamics of traditional American office life. Janitors are invisible. They float in and out of a room with no recognition, not even a face nod or a blink from anyone.  Yet we know of their presence through empty trash cans, clean sinks, and full water dispensers. They are so invisible yet so highly monitored. Machines like this speak to the low-trust that we have in their word.

But how could trust be built with people who are invisible? Is this the role of surveillancing machines? Building trust between people who have little physical interaction, personal trust, and mutual respect?

As interactions become less personal and more formal, I wonder about how this impacts informal workers. There’s plenty of literature and research on the impact of surveillance machines - such as airport security check, cameras in public spaces, and etc - but there is little work on the place of these machines in blue-collar work life or the lives of undocumented people. How will undocumented or under-served populations respond to ubiquitous surveillance and smart-recognition technologies? How do notions of trust, privacy, and judgement change with the use of these technologies?

What I found interesting from my conversation with Fuerza is that she welcomed the machine as a something that could help build trust, whereas most people have looked upon surveillancing technologies with distrust. People who are undocumented have complex relationships with technologies of surveillance. The underlying technology of this fingerprinting tech are also part of the very data scanning machines at the border that prevent her from entering into the USA.

This was also an important reflexive moment for me as an ethnographer - that I have to be aware of my own biases. I was aware of how upset I was at the installation of this machine - but this is because I have a very different relationship with everyday surveillance technology than an undocumented worker. If all of sudden I was told that I had to scan my hand to enter and exit the building so that my boss could monitor my schedule, I would see this as a form of distrust, but in this moment for Fuerza it was an opportunity to build trust.

The word “JANITOR” is from the Roman god JANUS-the keeper of keys. Historically cleaners were honored & trusted. Now they occupy one of the lowest social positions in the US. But not in my mind. Fuerza you rock! And you have one of the hardest commutes ever. Whenever I hear people bitching about their commutes because they chose to live in some far off suburb, I think that no one can beat you for the longest commute trophy.

Btw - one of my favorite artists is Dulce Pinzon. She is as photography from NYC. She has awesome photos of Mexican informal economy workers dressed up as heroes. We had a great time playing with her costumes a few years ago at my fave museum, Queens Museum of Arts!